sail and with a free wind. The three following days and nights
were devoted to a most careful re-examination of this new channel, with
the result that we thoroughly satisfied ourselves as to its absolute
practicability.

With our minds thus relieved of a tremendous load of anxiety, we felt
ourselves once more able to turn our thoughts in the direction of our
pearl harvest. A full fortnight had been devoted to the exploration of
the reef since our last visit to the oyster-bed, and we were of opinion
that it ought by this time to be in such a condition as to afford us a
very handsome return for our labours.

Accordingly, after allowing ourselves a day's rest to enable us to
recover from the fatigues of our recent arduous boat duty, we once more
repaired to the oyster-bed--Grace Hartley preferring on this occasion to
remain "at home", as she put it, rather than again face the disgusting
sights and odours that had met her on the occasion of her visit. But
upon our arrival at the scene of operations we soon found that a
fortnight had made a vast amount of difference in the condition of the
oysters. For whereas when we had last visited the oyster-bed the
process of putrefaction had only just begun, it had now advanced so far
that the fish were not only completely decayed but had also in many
cases so completely dried up under the influence of the sun's rays as to
have, to a very great extent, lost their odour. Furthermore, the birds
had been so busy that more than half the shells had been completely
emptied; our task, therefore, although still excessively disagreeable,
promised to be far less revoltingly offensive and disgusting than it had
been before. Even such offensiveness as still remained we contrived to
mitigate to a very considerable extent, by adopting the simple plan of
starting work on the windward edge of the bed, whereby the accumulated
odours were blown away from us, instead of directly in our faces, as on
the previous occasion.

Now we went to work systematically, roughly dividing the bed into three
nearly equal portions, one of which was to be gone over very carefully
by each of us. Also we each had a bucket, into which to drop our
spoils, so that there might be no time lost and no unnecessary fatigue
incurred in passing to and fro. Our system of working was simplicity
itself, and merely consisted in starting operations on the extreme
weather side of the bed, examining the fish just as they came to